All the Pretty Girls

by Riley Edwards

  “Knowing that makes me feel better. I hate thinking that Gabe would be without a companion.”

  ***

  “Oh my God. Nick!”

  Sally looked bad. She had something the vet called flail chest. Part of Sally’s broken ribs had been detached and had caused pressure on her lungs. The bruising on her lungs made it difficult to breathe and almost killed her; that and Beth’s stab had ruptured her spleen. All the beautiful fur down her belly had been shaved, and there was an angry red incision held together by staples. I hobbled over to the dog bed the vet had laid out for Sally.

  “We didn’t kennel her,” Dr. Steel explained. “I didn’t want her anymore agitated than she already was without you.” I tuned out the rest of what the doctor was saying and only heard Nick’s half-growl half-grunt when I knelt in front of Sally to cuddle her, but he didn’t dare stop me.

  “Aren’t we a pair. Now we’ll match.” Sally licked my face when I rubbed my cheek to her snoot. “You’re such a good girl.”

  Her tail swooshed on the floor, and she tried to scoot toward me.

  “Don’t move baby girl.” Uncaring how dirty the floor was in the Vet clinic, or my leg screaming in protest, I laid on my side next to Sally, carefully wrapped my arms around her and cried into her soft fur. “You saved me.” Sally burrowed in and shoved her face into the crook of my neck. I was so thankful Sally was alive I couldn’t stop crying.

  “Are you girls ready to go home now?”

  Nick had given me time with Sally while he spoke with the vet, making sure he understood how to care for her wounds. I grabbed the paperwork, and a bag of wound care supplies, while Nick carried Sally to his car and placed her in the backseat. I slid in next to her, not wanting to leave her side even for a minute.

  It was the same when we pulled in front of Nick’s. He carried her inside and laid her on the bed.

  “Don’t get used to this,” Nick warned. “In a few days, she’ll be back on her bed.”

  Sure, she would.

  Nick was a big ol’ softy, and he was just as grateful to Sally as I was. I didn’t believe he wanted her more than an arm’s length away either.

  My leg was throbbing, and the scabs on my back itched like crazy. When I got into bed next to Sally, I tried to rub my back on the sheets to quell some of the discomfort.

  “Lie on your side, I’ll rub your back with some arnica gel,” Nick offered.

  I should’ve known he wouldn’t miss my scratching.

  “You’re too good to me. That would be wonderful. It itches so bad now.”

  “You know, it’s only going to get worse. The more the scrapes heal, the itchier they’ll be.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. I’ll have to use a door jam or a brush to itch.”

  “Or, you could move in here, and I can scratch them for you.”

  “Move in?”

  My insides fluttered, and my heartrate picked up. Move in? Holy shit. Were we ready to live together? Maybe he meant while I was healing.

  “Yeah, you know, pack up your apartment and drive it over here,” he laughed.

  I elbowed him in the ribs, and his laughter died on a grunt.

  “Is it too soon?” I asked.

  “Hell no. Do you love me?” his voice was unsure as he asked.

  “Of course, I do.”

  “Then why wait?”

  “Well…” I tried to think of a good reason, but I couldn’t. Living here with Nick and Sally was a dream come true, something I never thought I’d have. Somehow this wonderful man had looked past my scars and loved me. What more could I ask for?

  “I died a thousand deaths the day Beth had you. My heart felt like it was being ripped from my chest. Meadow, I know you’re the one. I don’t want to waste a day. I want my girls here, under my roof, where I can come home every day and love them. I want your clothes next to mine, us making coffee together in the morning, but most of all, I want to fall into bed every night with you where you’re supposed to be – by my side. I love you, Red, and if you’ll have me, one day soon I want to make you my wife and adopt all those kids I know you want. We’ll fill our home full of love. You and me? There’s nothing we can’t do together.”

  I was speechless. I don’t know what I’d done to deserve Nick and his unwavering love and support, but I wasn’t going to squander it. If he was giving it, I was taking it, holding on to it, and protecting it. We had the foundation, the roots had taken hold, and I was basking in the glow. I would do everything in my power to make sure I nurtured and cherished our budding relationship until it grew so towering and unbreakable he’d never be sorry he chose me.

  He pulled my shirt up and was spreading the cooling gel into my back. I took a moment to enjoy his strong hands against my skin. When I looked at Sally, her sweet face resting on a pillow next to me, I knew I was home.

  “I love you, Nicholas Clark.”

  “Does that mean you’ll stay?”

  “There is no place in the world I’d rather be.”

  The three of us laid in silence; there was no need to fill the moment with words. Peace had settled over the room, its weight heavy and comfortable - a promise for the future.

  Home.

  Epilogue

  Becoming a man

  Four years later.

  Nick’s transfer had gone through, and he’d taken his wife home to Georgia.

  Meadow had spent the last few months going back and forth between Virginia and Georgia to go house hunting with his aunts, who were all more than happy to help. They’d started dropping hints two years ago after he and Meadow had married that it was time to move home. The cousins missed him, and his uncles could use his help at their training facility. He wasn’t ready to leave the FBI yet, but did agree it was time to go to Georgia and start a family of his own with Meadow.

  After what seemed to be a hundred houses later, Meadow declared she’d found the perfect one, a four-bedroom with a huge yard for Sally and room for a swing set. What had Meadow so excited was it was in the same neighborhood as Nolan and Reagan’s house. Nick liked that. He’d missed his family the last nine years he’d been away. Not that his family hadn’t always been close by, his uncles were always at the ready to help when he needed. Thankfully, he’d only had to call on them once, when the weight of Meadow’s near-death attack had left him close to breaking. He’d never be more grateful to the men for stopping him from what would’ve been his biggest regret. Luckily for Meadow and Nick, they knew no such regrets.

  Nick watched from inside the house, through the wall of windows that gave a perfect unobstructed view of the backyard as Meadow threw Sally a ball. They were inseparable, Sally and Meadow, his girls. He couldn’t wait to start welcoming children into their new home. They had an appointment with an adoption agency in a week. Nick was trying his hardest not to get his hopes up; it could take a long time for them to be accepted and then find a child to love. But he was more than ready.

  There was a knock on the door, and Nick called out the back door to Meadow. “You ready?”

  Before she could answer, voices filled the entryway and people started filing in.

  “Yo! Now that you’re home, you better get used to Jasper just walking in. After all these years, no one has been able to train him to wait for the door to be answered,” Lenox said.

  “Even after he’s walked in on things he shouldn’t see,” Levi grouched.

  “Gross,” Adalyn Walker, Jasper and Emily’s youngest daughter, said.

  “Dad, why don’t you just wait? It’s totally rude,” Delaney Walker, their eldest daughter, asked.

  “Because he thinks it’s funny to annoy people. Uncle Lenox said if he did it again he was going to put his foot in his ass. So, dad just does it more.” Hadley Walker, Adalyn’s twin, added.

  “Hadley!” Emily Walker scolded her daughter.

  “What? It’s true. He said a bunch of other bad words I’m not saying. And Aunt Lily said she’d wash his mouth out with soap if he used the frick w
ord in front of us again. Dad says it, like, all the time. You should wash his mouth out.”

  Jasper roared with laughter and patted his daughter on the head as he walked by her adding, “Sweetheart, if your mother tried to wash my mouth out with soap I’d bend her over my knee and spank her.”

  “Jasper!” Emily now chastised her husband, who was unfazed and winked at her.

  “That is so gross. I know what that means!” Delaney whined. “Why can’t I have normal parents? This is why I can’t bring a boyfriend to the house.”

  Nick watched as two very interesting things happened. Carter Lenox, Lily and Lenox’s eldest son, cut his eyes at Delaney, the possessive sound Carter made wouldn’t have been missed if anyone had been paying attention. The other was Jasper stopped dead in his tracks, turned toward his very beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, and he too made a sound that was of a possessive father. “You do not bring boyfriends to the house, because I will shoot them. And you can thank your mother for passing down her black hair, blue eyes, and sense of humor, three things that make teenage boys lose their minds. The first boy that knocks on my door will walk away with a limp.”

  “You are impossible,” Delaney told Jasper.

  Jasper was not wrong. His fifteen-year-old looked more like a twenty-year-old version of her very stunning mother. Jasper had three more after Delaney to worry about – all equally pretty.

  Lily Lenox walked in with her son, Ethan, following behind her; she had a tray of veggies, and Ethan was carrying a case of beer though he was nowhere near old enough to drink it.

  Nick’s younger brother, Jackson, and Quinn Walker came in holding a video game console, controllers, and cables. The two of them had been best friends since before they could walk. Then when they could, everyone wished they could lock them in a padded room together to contain the tornado they caused wherever they went. The two of them were trouble, and always up to something. Nick was afraid his brother was going to be in a world of hurt when Quinn grew up a little more, and other boys started to notice how beautiful she was. There would come a time when Quinn didn’t want to build things with Jack anymore, and she’d notice the attention the boys were sure to give her.

  “Where’s your mom and dad?” Blake McCoy asked as she looked around the room for Reagan and Clark. Her husband Levi and their daughter Moira had already made their way to the kitchen to unload all the food they’d brought.

  “I don’t know, they told me to walk down here and they’d be up in a minute,” Jack answered, helping himself to Nick’s TV.

  Nick and Meadow stood off to the side and smiled. Controlled chaos, that was what Reagan had called it when the large group got together. It was perfect. Nick wouldn’t want it any other way. This was how Nick had grown up – surrounded with love and laughter.

  “Where’s Jason and Kayla?” Meadow asked Emily about Nick’s cousin and his fiancée.

  “They’ll be here soon. Jason forgot something at his house; they went to get it,” Emily explained.

  It took a while, but Nick had ushered everyone into the backyard where he and Meadow had set up tables for the food and coolers for the drinks. It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining, Sally was in dog heaven having six kids under the age of fifteen to chase around.

  Meadow looked around the backyard and smiled.

  Perfect.

  She loved their family. They were loud, they were hilarious, and they loved unconditionally. Nolan and Reagan tried to slip in unnoticed and sat at a table off to the side as if they weren’t thirty minutes late.

  Nick, Lenox, Jasper, and Levi glanced over at the couple and busted out laughing. Meadow wasn’t sure what was so funny until she looked at Reagan. There was no doubt what the two of them had been doing with their time alone in their house.

  Reagan’s flushed cheeks turned a deep shade of pink, and she smiled wide. “What? Can you blame me?”

  Meadow couldn’t stop herself; she too joined the men laughing. “Not one damn bit.”

  Nick tagged her around the waist and pulled her closer to him. “Really, Red?”

  “What? There’s something about the Clark men that inspires…”

  “Don’t finish that sentence.” Nick laughed, and Meadow winked at Reagan.

  “Damn, I knew she’d fit right in.” Lenox smiled.

  Meadow had fit right in. The moment they’d met her, she was accepted into the tribe and made one of them. She felt it four years ago, and she felt it now – there was no other place she’d rather be.

  ***

  Ethan Lenox needed to talk to his parents. He’d been putting it off for the last week, and now the rock that had started in his stomach had turned into a boulder. He knew his parents loved him, but they were going to be so disappointed in him.

  He’d fucked up, and he knew it.

  He was sixteen-years-old, too young.

  But he’d made up his mind.

  “Mom. Dad. Can I talk to you a minute?”

  Now was as good a time as any Ethan thought; better to just rip the scab off and bleed.

  “What’s wrong?” his mother asked.

  “Fuck,” his father muttered. Ethan was unable to hide his discomfort from his father. It wasn’t often Ethan screwed up. He was a straight-A student and excelled at sports. His parents had instilled great respect in him; his coaches and teachers loved him. So did the cheerleaders, and that was where his current problem started. “As long as no one’s knocked up, we can fix anything.”

  “Lenox.” His mother slapped his father’s shoulder.

  Ethan tried to keep his face blank and stop his flinch, but it was too late. His father saw it.

  “Shit,” Lenox muttered.

  The time had come for Ethan Lenox to become a man, years before he should’ve.

  Find out how it all began – The 707 Freedom Series.

  http://geni.us/5geo

  Free (Lenox and Lily)

  Freeing Jasper (Jasper and Emily)

  Finally Free (Levi and Blake)

  Freedom (Clark and Reagan)

  FREE – Book 1 sample

  Chapter One

  I traced my finger across the cool, smooth headstone over and over. SHANE McGRATH OWINGS. It had been five years to the day since I lost my best friend. My only friend.

  Growing up the way we did, wealthy and privileged, you didn’t have real friends. They were business associates. All of them jockeying for position in the elite Hollywood crowd. Even when we were in high school, especially high school, it was all about who you knew and who your family was. It was never about who you were as a person. No one wanted to know you, they wanted to use you.

  The night before Shane left for basic training we went to Santa Monica Pier and sat on the beach for hours talking. When the sun set we laid in the sand, stargazing and telling each other anything and everything we could think of. He knew all my secrets. The only person I could drop the record producer’s daughter façade with and be the real Lillian Nelson.

  Shane didn’t want anything from me. He didn’t care that my neighbors were famous rock stars, he didn’t care that my house was in an exclusive gated community. Shane’s family had more money than mine. In the twisted hierarchy of Hollywood royalty, the Owings’ name was higher up the ladder than Nelson.

  If anyone found out we had slept on the beach in the sand, we would’ve been chastised for behaving like low- class Valley kids. Drink a ten-thousand-dollar bottle of scotch and promptly throw it up in your dad’s theater room – no problem. Get caught underage drinking at a premier party – brushed under the rug. Get caught sleeping at the beach – end of the world.

  Rich kid problems.

  The morning Shane left for Army basic training was the day he was free. His family made it clear that if he got on the plane to Georgia, he would no longer be an Owings. Nor would he benefit from all the privilege that name brought, or bought, depending on how you looked at it. When I snuck to Fort Benning to see his basic training graduation, I was so proud of h
im. He looked different. Taller, stronger, like he had turned into a real man while there. I missed him every day he was gone. It was the longest twelve weeks of my life. I wrote to him every day, and he wrote me back when he could.

  Knowing that Shane had escaped the life he hated made every minute of my loneliness worth it. We spent three awesome days together after graduation before he had to leave for training in Kentucky. We kept in regular contact while he was away, only now, I knew he was keeping secrets. He was evasive when I asked questions about the Army. He tried to cushion the hurt and explained there were things he couldn’t tell me about his training or what he would be doing. As much as the distance stung, I understood.

  Whenever he called to catch up, it was like nothing had changed. I filled him in on the latest pretentious Hollywood gossip, and he told me what he could about the guys in his unit. I was so jealous. He was living his life and doing what he wanted to do. He spent time in Kentucky, went for training in Texas, and then back to Georgia. Meanwhile, I stayed in California doing everything my father told me to do.

  After a while, his calls started coming less and less. And the time it took to return my calls grew longer and longer. Not talking to him every day broke my heart. I missed him so much, but I continued to try and understand he was busy. But it was hard; I was lonely and surrounded by people I despised. Now that Shane was all but gone out of my life, I had no one.

  It had been months since I had heard from Shane when he called to tell me he had five days of leave and wanted me to come visit him in Georgia. I was over-the-moon excited and booked my ticket while we were still on the phone. I counted down the days like a prayer; I needed to see him so badly.

  When I finally got there, I didn’t realize how much I had truly missed him. He was the same, yet so very different. He was rougher now, hardened and more muscular than the last time I saw him almost two years before. He took me around the small town he now lived in and showed me what there was to see. Which wasn’t much. But I didn’t care; as long as I was with Shane nothing else in the world mattered.